You just know the Chief Examiner spent the whole game playing with a Newton Cradle half-heartedly and sighing. Wondering if The Hulk was really the best possible choice for his fiendish “pick up litter” plan.

I remember reading about this one in an ad in an 80's comic. I couldn't tell you which one. But it stuck with me. I was only vaguely familiar with text/graphic adventure games. It wasn't until recently that I thought about it again.

I've never really been interested in doing a let's play before, but the idea of a Hulk adventure game seemed fascinating and worth exploring: exploring whether or not it worked, how Hulk translated into a puzzle solving format and what kind of tone it would have. A Hulk adventure game sounded counter-intuitive for a lot of reasons, but it could still work. Though the Hulk is a dumb brute, winning the day by improvisation often requires certain problem solving skills. I mean, he's no Spider-Man, but while Hulk dumb, he has battle instincts that sometime results in winning against foes who are immune to punches. Of course, usually it's "Hulk can't touch you but he can drown you/bury you under the Earth/thunder clap you/etc" They tend not to be complex solutions.

But as much as I want to rush to Hulk's defense, he has also picked fights with the weather. On multiple occasions.

Still, I feel like making an adventure game with puzzles that adheres to his skill set and abilities isn't IMPOSSIBLE. Where does this game work and where does it not.

Gameplay: I'm sure that there are far worse and janky text/graphic adventure games out there. Ones with logic that is weaker and more confusing, ones that are generic and boring, ones with unfair dead ends. I'm given to understand that this was a problem back in the day.

Still, this one, while not awful, is a mix of dull, confusing and frustrating much of the time. Not all of the puzzles our bad. I kind of like the one where you have to fan a gale through a dome's screen door. But a lot isn't intuitive. Aside from not easily finding Dr. Strange, I feel like some answers only could be found with the help button. The fact that each new outdoor space has a dome in the distance is confusing... I just thought they were the same dome.

Adding the fuzzy place also made the game a mess. It made a lot of the navigation feel pointless, especially in randomizing the three different outdoorsy fields. Also, there's no warning about the instant death room where if you lose, you can't finish the game. Despite taking place largely in fields, it feels pretty claustrophobic when it should be trying to present the illusion of freedom.

Apparently the only way to finish the game is getting 100 points. If there was a point system BUT ALSO a sense of closure in beating the main bad guy, I could forgive that. You can feel like you've beat the game, then the Chief Examiner says "Great. But you can do better! Try again!", then it wouldn't feel like a cheat or a dead end. Collecting gems is a pretty weak goal for a superhero, a profession marked by helping others.

In addition, it really doesn't let you be the Hulk in any of the ways that are fun. No smashing, only a couple displays of strength, and nothing really specific to that character except sometimes he's less effective. I'll get to that when we talk about characters.

And lastly, the use of words needs some work. I can't use cover as a synonym for hold in the subject of noses? I wasn't using "peruse", but there are times when there are certain common synonyms were not helpful.

Story: Hahahahahaha. Seriously, though, I didn't need a complex story, but if I want to live out my fantasy of being a superhero you got to give me something. The story, as written on a sign, seems to be "this is a video game. Play it." Then collect gems for some guy because shrug. Is he saving a friend? Doesn't seem so. Is there any motivation for the Hulk? Nope. Is there any rhyme or reason to the guest stars? Not really. Why are there mutant ants? What's Ultron doing under the Earth? What's Strange doing hanging around in domeland? Nothing. There's not much sense of accomplishment or heroism. I feel like there was already a game in place and they stuck a bunch of Marvel stickers on it. Even worse, it doesn't feel like they would have needed to change much. An extra line of dialogue would have added at least SOME context in many cases. Maybe Ultron is under the Earth because these are his domes and you are stealing the gems that power his Earthquake machine. Boom. Done. But as is, there's little here. I'm not looking for a great story, but I'd like something to hang my Hulk hat on. Pictured below.

Characters: The choice of characters... actually isn't bad. The problem is the utilization of them. There are certain Marvel heroes who play well with almost any other character. Interestingly, the most notable ones all got Questprobe games. Spider-Man and the Thing work do to be sort of everymen and often bringing grounded points of view and humourous comments to big cosmic situations. Hulk also works teamed up with nearly everyone, often because he can equally be friend or foe and he's a nomad most of the time. Who knows where he is going to pop up.

The villains chosen, though not frequent Hulk enemies, work too. My feel is Hulk works best with three different kinds of enemies: monsters, super-powered thugs who don't realize what they are getting themselves into and finally, smug assholes. The last category are guys who are in some way convinced of their superiority, only to have their brilliant plans undone by the Hulk feeding them humble pie, fois grois style. These are the kinds of jerks who think: "Hulk is undoubtedly powerful, but my plan is foolproof." But the Hulk is a like unto a force of nature and there are no end of stories wherein guys realize the flaws of messing with nature too late.

The problem is only Ant-Man gets a moment to match up with his characters powers and even then, it's off screen. There's no real joy and seeing the characters bounce off of each other (and the always fun scenes of "other non-stupid hero tries desperately to herd cats The Hulk." The villains? We'll it's pretty unclear what the Chief Examiner's deal is. Nightmare appears solely in a memory. Ultron is defeated off screen by someone else. You never get the satisfaction of laying any of them out or watching them unravel. Good choices, but it's all for naught.

How to make it better? OK, let's start with the setting: How about an army base? Hulk is always frequenting those. And the characters? Well, if we are limited to two villains, let's go with the Abomination and the Leader, who are trying to take over an army base and launch and evil weapon or something. The Abomination is a physical threat to the Hulk and actually has a greater base strength than him (but, as always, the madder Hulk gets, the stronger he gets, meaning that doesn't last long). The Leader can have robots and brainwash people, meaning you have to stop some enemies without hurting them. The Bruce Banner identity can be useful in disarming gamma weapons or coming up with strategies and reading things and the Hulk can break stuff down.

Some puzzles can involve intentionally putting Banner in harm's way to become the Hulk or trying not to, so that the Hulk won't make a bad situation worse, like a hostage situation. Hulk puzzles might involve using improvised weaponry in a fight or alternative fight strategies. No collecting gems, just useful objects. Some can be too big for Banner to carry or to complicated for the Hulk to use. Rick Jones, Doc Samson and She-Hulk can show up and if they want bigger characters, Captain America and Iron Man would fit in well in a situation where bad guys have taken over an army base.

So those are my thoughts. I'm glad I played the game. I look forward to trying the Spider-Man game. See you next time.